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On Wednesday 08 December 2004 23:55, Grant Sewell wrote:
Please bear in mind that I have never had any experience with Microsoft's XML documents.From what I understand about XML, then there is no reason that you should expect MSOffice to be able to import *any* XML document.As far as I am aware, XML is merely a set of instructions that say that every tag must be closed, etc, etc. If this is the case, then Microsoft have free reign to use an XML style that is completely unique and have no reason to be bothered implementing an import filter that will read OpenOffice's XML style. Let's have an example, here: <text:p text:style-name="Standard"> Testing document </text:p> The above was taken from a quick OOo document with merely the words "Testing document" in the "Standard" style. As you can see, in *this* document, the XML has the "text" tags, opened with "<text:p...>" and closed with "</text:p>". There is nothing in XML that says this is a must. It is open to interpretation. Microsoft may well have interpreted it as this: In order to place text with a given style, let's use the following: <formattedtext:p style:styletype="Default" style:subtype="Small"> Testing document </formattedtext:p> If MSOffice is expecting this, then it isn't going to read a OOo document, despite them both being XML documents. Basically, when Microsoft said they'd be embracing the XML standard for the documents, a lot of eyebrows were raised. Having XML doesn't actually mean that it can be read by anything else, and it doesn't mean that it can read all other XML documents. Another example, <document:p style:styletype="562xll3@@#1%%" style:subtype="&1124m,,"> Testing document </document:p> Given this scenario, can you tell me what styletype and subtype are being used? This would still (I believe) conform to being XML.
OK. I thought that the DTD was supposed to describe the tags used within an XML document. ie describe the framework that the document conforms to. If this isn't the case, then how can xml be a good way of interchanging data - I thought it was supposed to the muttsnuts wen it comes to exchanging data between programs. I thought the whole idea of xml documents was the you wouldn't have to write filters to read in the data. If one program can't read the xml created by another program then the format is a complete an utter waste of time (imho) it might as well be a proprietry format for all the good it would do. Completely as a side issue, if Mike Andrews happens to read this in an archive somewhere so your shitty Mail Wiper out. I don't appreciate getting spammed by your stupid program - I didn't send you an email, I sent it to the list. Thank god for procmail and /dev/null. Jon -- The Mailing List for the Devon & Cornwall LUG Mail majordomo@xxxxxxxxxxxx with "unsubscribe list" in the message body to unsubscribe.